the old life was very satisfying, of course. Please do not become too relaxed watering plants, baking cookies, putting out the diaper pail to remember the rest. I don’t know exactly what price you are paying for your safety. me, I’m paying a pretty high price for mine and the mirrors turn their backs from me now. I prefer to cover them with towels to spare them the sight of my death. I have joined the walking living dead upon the avenues, in the saloons and everywhere else. but it’s 4 a.m. and the police are driving by and I hear voices outside and we all live very close together here and I am a coward, I am afraid of jails, I hate jails, and so I turn Wagner down a little on the radio, sip my next to last beer and wish you the love of memory and the love of love or whatever there is, dear one.

[To Neeli Cherry]

[?1965]

[* * *] I was in a mellow mood (rare for me) when I wrote the intro to Sherman’s stuff, and I felt a little kind and comradely. It is easier to feel that way when Sherman is at a distance. Outside of the poem form I do not much buy his antics. I believe I made this clear in my poem “Letter from the North.” Yet everything I said in the intro to his poems I said out of the truth of myself, whatever truth I could find. It’s a scurvy word anyhow. Actually I do not think J. writes as well as he used to…never fulfilled the early promise and all that hogwash, except maybe with the poem “Montgomery Street” which I think is a great poem, and if a guy can write a poem like this, I will forgive a lot of his nonsense in actual life.

[To Neeli Cherry]

October 28, 1965

[* * *] my thanks for the emotive “An Invitation,” good flow here. although the truth factor in some lines disturbs me: “to combat all the yellow-bellies who are sucking us dry. and they are, they are.” “but the only alternative is not to fight, and my god! we couldn’t do that.” sounds like you’ve been hornswoggled. if you really think about it, it is the white-bellies who are sucking you dry. but, then, to have a war it is always best to believe you are the Good guy and the other is the Bad guy. it runs more smoothly. death needs help sometimes.

then, too, I think you might have written your lines in jest, in satire, and that I missed the point. [* * *]

[To William Want-ling]

[?1965]